Tag: The Beatles

My Hot Take On The Beatles ‘New’ Song ‘Now And Then’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The new Beatles song Now and Then is….pretty good. It sound to me like a mish-mash of ELO, Radiohead and The Traveling Wilburys. My the thing I feel a lot of people miss is it’s actually assessable and good, which is what any pop song should be.

So, as such, I feel a lot of people are being too hard on The Beatles for releasing the song. It’s always nice to hear John Lennon’s voice and if this song introduces him to a new generation of Beatles fans, all at the better. In some respects, the song’s existence seems to say more about Paul McCartney’s relationship to John Lennon’s legacy as well as his own mortality than it does anything with artistic aims.

Anyway. I like the song. And John Lennon was taken from us far too soon. My fear is, of course, that this is just the beginning of groups like The Beatles using AI for creative ends. It would make a lot of sense if the airwaves were one day flooded with a zillion AI-generated Beatles songs.

Ugh. Sometimes, the future seems like it will suck.

The Curious Case Of A Lack Of A Beatles Bio-Pic

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It seems as though the bio-pics of Queen and Elton John have been proxies for the big prize — The Beatles. To date, the whole subject of the rise and fall of The Beatles simply has not been addressed by Hollywood.

I don’t know how much of that is the lingering cultural significance of the band and how much is the remaining living members are very protective of the group’s legacy and simply won’t sanction any sort of attempt to document what happened.

But here, just for fun, is how I would structure a movie about The Beatles.

Beginning
You open with where the four future Beatles are just before events cause their lives to become intertwined.

Inciting Incident: John Lennon meets Paul McCartney.

You spend much of the first act showing the lead up to the formation of The Beatles. Crucial points of the first act would be Brian Epstein becoming the bands manager and Ringo joining the band. You would linger on John, Paul and George’s time in Germany.

The band appears on Ed Sullivan.
Middle

This would be the “fun and games” point of the story where you see how the individual members of the band reacted to Beatlemania.

Midpoint: Brian Epstein dies.

Crisis: John Lennon produces the “How Do You Sleep” diss track towards MacCartney.
End

Climax: Lennon is shot.

End: The last meeting of Paul, George and Ringo.

God, Part 3: ‘Spooky’

Shelton Bumgarner

by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls

I don’t really believe in a God, but this evening something really fucking spooky happened — just casually looking up something small — but important — for the novel, I found a crucial conceit-defining plot point that would make any Beatles aficionado sit up and take notice. It was an eerie “ah-ha!” moment that made me look around to see if I wasn’t in like, the fucking Matrix or something.

I think some of it has to do with once you establish the core of one of your two “main” characters, then the rest takes care of itself. Or, put another way, I’m well on my way to having a “canon,” rather than simply a series of plot points created out of thin air for expediency sake.

But let me be absolutely clear — I have been here before many, many, many times. The next milestone is what happens when I push my Hero and Heroine into the “special world” of the second act. If the whole thing doesn’t collapse at that point, then, well, we’re rockin.

In a sense, this novel is what would happen if you poured Nick Hornby’s “High Fidelity” into a Stieg Larsson novel that was having a Vulcan mind-meld with Network, Columbiana, Gone Girl, All The President’s Men, Fargo and maybe a little bit of Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood. But that’s simply some of the influences I see on my side as I develop the novel. Should anyone actually ever read this thing, that might not be as clear.

And, remember, I’m a pretty good storyteller, while generally my writing is generally derided as piss-poor for various reasons. I would temper your expectations until you actually held some semblance of the finished product in your hands and could make your own judgement.

The whole thing could collapse pretty easily. But, for the moment, I’m cautiously optimistic.